Mansur Ali Khan "Tiger" Pataudi! This
Nawab of the erstwhile princely state
of Pataudi was a revered cricket
captain and household name. He was
well known for all the right reasons;
his winning attitude, gentlemanly
behavior, old age charm, and also
because he was the youngest Indian
captain to date. Today, he is again in
the news for all the wrong
reasons.

Recently, he was accused of
hunting the endangered black buck.
Immediately after the news broke out,
he and six other accomplices went into
hiding while his scout Madan Singh is
in jail. Singh said that Pataudi had
fired at the black buck. He has since
been released on bail. Ironically, the
police had let Pataudi and his six
accomplices go and reluctantly agreed
to investigate only when pressurized
by wildlife officials and animal
rights activists. The police made
repeated requests-- no warrants or
orders, but requests and summons to
given themselves up. Since they did
not show up after three such summons,
they granted time till June 16 for
Pataudi and others to surrender.

In the meanwhile, a police team
raided his many homes and got control
of a carcass of a black buck in a jeep
that belonged to him. The carcass had
bullets whose caliber matched
Pataudi's registered gun. They also
found other "trophies" of endangered
animals in his house. Among those
found were the skins of
a tiger, nilgiri
thar, spotted deer and sambhar, all of
which fall under the protected
category and whose hunting was
forbidden in 1972 under the Wildlife
Protection Act. These skins have been
sent for forensic testing to determine
if these animals were killed before
the 1972 amnesty. When the
police went public with these new
findings, this "Tiger," through his
lawyer wanted some more time to
surrender! More amazing is an
anticipatory bail application that he
filed in a local court seeking an
automatic bail because of an autopsy
report. This report said that the buck
died from a knife wound and Pataudi's
claim is that since the buck did not
die from his bullets he is not
responsible for its death. He claims
that at 65, he has many physical
ailments and therefore deserves
leniency. He has also challenged the
competency of the police to
investigate this case since this was
booked under the Wildlife Protection
Act. A lower court, while rejecting an
anticipatory bail, seemed to agree
that it was not competent to try the
case and asked the case be filed in an
environment court.

His son, Mr. Saif Ali Khan, a
Bollywood actor, is the chief
interlocutor for Pataudi, and is
himself accused of killing a black
buck along with another Bollywood
actor Mr. Salman Khan in 1998. They
deny any wrongdoing. However,
activists say that while poaching is
illegal, hunting remains popular and
police and wildlife officials often
turn a blind eye -- sometimes under
pressure -- to expeditions by the
rich, famous or powerful. This, they
say, is a major obstacle to efforts to
save protected animals. In many cases,
even the murder of civilians goes
unpunished. Mr. Salman Khan is accused
of vehicular manslaughter when he, in
an inebriated state, drove over
homeless people sleeping on a
pavement. He has since been released
on bail because of "acting
responsibilities" and the
eye-witnesses miraculously changed
their story when the case went to
trial. While these eye-witnesses claim
that the police forced them to give
testimonies which are not true, many
believe that the eye-witnesses have
been either bought or intimidated.
India has no witness protection
program and hence witnesses are
usually at risk to unlawful and
extra-legal elements. Further, Indian
police and investigative agencies have
a disastrous conviction rate. Either
this is due to incompetence,
inadequate training, inadequate
infrastructure, inadequate information
base, or political interference. Many
analysts and experts say that
investigative agencies are
manipulated, coerced, or even bribed
to routinely filing incomplete or
legally unsustainable cases so that a
chosen few so-called crÃ¨me de la crÃ¨me
of the society can get away on a
technicality. The recent
Bofors case acquittal is a case in
point.

The problem runs deeper. The
Wildlife Trust of India drew parallels
between this case and the alarming
fall in tiger and elephant
populations. They charged the
Government of wildlife mismanagement.
For example, while the Government of
Rajasthan complained bitterly against
the actors who killed a black buck and
got away scot-free (for all practical
purposes), they had earlier hosted a
party of Arab sheikhs to hunt the
Great Indian Buzzard to near
extinction. The apathy of the public
save a few activists; political
interference for money, power,
connections, or vote-banks; a police
and forest management force that is
under-paid, corrupted, ill-trained,
and ill-equipped; a judiciary that is
overburdened with number of cases and
antiquity of laws; a polity that sees
all issues in terms of vote-banks and
political vendettas have all
contributed heavily to absolute
disregard for the law by those who are
rich, famous, and powerful.

While India does believe in "rule
of the law" and "innocent until proven
guilty" paradigms in jurisprudence,
the selective application of these
paradigms and the law is disconcerting
for the common man. It almost feels
like when someone is a cricketer,
movie actor, or politician, the Indian
legal system does not apply to them.
At the same time, there are cases of
Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi and
Vijayendra Saraswathi. Even though
higher courts have consistently thrown
out lower court rulings and police
charges as baseless, they continue to
be harassed by the police and local
administration. The length of the arm
of law seems to be either short or
long depending on who is on the other
side.

India is an emerging global power
and is seen as the choicest
destination for knowledge industry.
More and more industries are reaching
into the Indian labor market to
enhance, augment, and optimize their
production capacities worldwide. With
such increased wealth creation and
increased international visibility,
this selective application of "rule of
law" will work counter to our national
interests. The "rule of law" and the
judicial process are some of the few
advantages India has over China.

Let us not squander these
advantages to help a few self-serving
individuals.